Questo romanzo è la storia di un progressivo inoltrarsi nel sogno di un silenzio assoluto, che il giovane narratore compie con ritmi e colpi di scena. Chi è quest'uomo anonimo, che potrebbe essere chiunque e decide di ricercare un silenzio totale, a cui il mondo esterno si rivolta aumentando il suo fragore immorale e malefico? La lotta contro il frastuono per la conquista del silenzio assoluto è la saga di un uomo normale, sposato con una donna che non ama, dalla vita semplice e borghese.

Prior to the 1960s, Andrew Wyeth enjoyed a stellar reputation as a rising star in the art world. Since then, critics and scholars have largely ignored him. Wyeth, however, who is age 88 at the date of publication, has continued to paint, to the delight of his admirers, collectors, and the art-loving public. Now, in association with the High Museum exhibition, Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic takes a fresh look at the work of one of America's most beloved artists.In examining his entire oeuvre, the book celebrates the artist's ongoing love affair with everyday life-domestic, natural, and architectural. Found throughout Wyeth's work, these objects form patterns that illuminate core themes and reveal the artist wrestling with issues of memory, temporality, embodiment, and the metaphysical. Organized chronologically and thematically, the book explores how the artist's approach to these subjects was formed in his early career, and has been revisited in new and surprising ways in recent years.Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic comprises 150 tempera paintings and 50 drawings and watercolors-including his most-famous works, but also many published here for the first time.

Frank Lloyd Wright is not only synonymous with architecture, his name is also synonymous with the American house in the twentieth century. In particular, his residential work has been the subject of continuing interest and controversy. Wright's Fallingwater (1935), the seminal masterpiece perched over a waterfall deep in the Pennsylvania highlands, is perhaps the best-known private house in the history of the world. In fact, Wright's houses — from his Prairie style Robie House (1906) in Chicago, to the Storer (1923) and Freeman (1923) houses in Los Angeles, and Taliesen West (1937) in the Arizona desert — are all touchstones of modern architecture. For the first time, all 289 extant houses are shown here in exquisite color photographs. Along with Weintraub's stunning photos and a selection of floor plans and archival images, the book includes text and essays by several leading Wright scholars. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses is an event of great importance and a major contribution to the literature on this titan of modern architecture.

Jed Johnson: Opulent Restraint is the first book to chronicle the fascinating career, work and times of an interior design superstar whose life was cut short in 1996 by the disastrous explosion of TWA Flight 800. From humble beginnings in Minnesota, Johnson rose to prominence in nineteen-seventies New York, via the Warhol Factory, to the highest echelons of the rarified world of design and decoration. His impressive celebrity client list included Pierre Bergé, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, Richard Gere, and Barbara Streisand. Yet, with success and acclaim, he never lost his shy humility, generous spirit and quiet grace. Through a series of essays, project photographs and personal pictures we trace the influences on his nascent career, his special relationship with Andy Warhol and his magical affect on others. Many never-before-seen photographs are included by important photographers, among them: Cecil Beaton, Francesco Scavullo, Billy Name, Jack Mitchell, John Hall, Elizabeth Heyert and Warhol himself. Opulent Restraint is a must have book for every interior design office and for those interested in the fascinating Warhol years in New York. Interior Design magazine called Johnson “a great talent” whose “spirit lives on in a stunning legacy of interior design”.

Prairie Skyscraper traces the history and evolution of Wright's recently restored nineteen-story-skyscraper masterwork, which takes its place beside the S.C. Johnson Wax Research Tower as one of Wright's only two vertical structures-and, at 221 feet tall-his largest. Built as a multi-use skyscraper in 1956, the building is now a luxury hotel and arts center, featuring collections of the works of Bruce Goff and Frank Lloyd Wright, and soon a new museum facility designed by Zaha Hadid. Now, with all-new color photography, we are given access to this extraordinary architectural gem and the Wright-designed furnishings custom made for it.

Throughout his career, David Hovey has designed spaces for living, exploiting structure and materials to create buildings of strength, simplicity, and grace. The Nature of Dwellings presents a comprehensive view of the seven single-family houses Hovey has designed, three near Chicago and four in Arizona, and relates them to his award-winning portfolio of multifamily housing developments.Lavish suites of photographs reveal the sweep of space through the interiors and the relationship of the houses to the land. Through a series of comments accompanying these photographs, Hovey describes his design intention and the palette of materials that creates a unique solution for each site. These houses merge into the landscape, and, with names like Ravine Bluff, Cloud Chaser, and Shadow Caster, their ties to the land and climate are clear.

This epic history is the first comprehensive survey of the use of wood in architecture throughout the ages. The book is organized both chronologically and geographically. It features works from the oldest heritage of wooden buildings (Kyoto's Buddhist temples and Scandinavia's pagan-inspired stave churches) to the latest cutting edge designs, proving that wood is on the rise as the preferred material in these ecologically conscious times. Every region of the world with a native tradition of building with wood is carefully examined. In North America, the book demonstrates the European origins of New England's clapboards and saltboxes, and later shows how such sophisticated California architects as Greene & Greene or Bernard Maybeck could blend age-old traditions of the Far East and Switzerland with a Pacific Coast sense of novelty and whimsy. Spectacular and diverse photographs highlight the architectural masterpieces of wooden architecture throughout the world, illustrating that wood is a building material with a deep history as well as a vibrant future.

«Sempre più Dorian Gray si innamorava della sua stessa bellezza, con sempre maggiore interesse seguiva il corrompersi della sua anima...» fino a uccidere la sua immagine e se stesso. Sinistra vicenda di magie, delitti e sdoppiamenti di personalità, «Il ritratto di Dorian Gray» non è solamente un romanzo dell'orrore e una profonda riflessione sul tema filosofico del doppio, ma il vero e proprio breviario del decadentismo e dell'estetismo fin-de-siècle.»

Gwathmey Siegel has long been the architect of choice for clients who want to combine extravagance with an intellectually rigorous, well-crafted modernism. While the houses for which they are so justly renowned often exceed 20,000 square feet, the apartments they have designed are frequently one-tenth that size. The work, however, does not suffer from this reduction in scale, it rather takes on a stunning intensity — as if the ideas encompassed in the bigger houses are in the apartments compressed into tight, concentrated forms. The seventeen apartments featured in this monograph document the evolution of the firm's design ethos over thirty years of practice from a minimalist modernism to what has sometimes been described as baroque modernism.

Imagining Ground Zero: Official and Unofficial Proposals for the World Trade Center Site documents not only the master plan competition, won by Studio Daniel Libeskind and sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, but also proposals submitted by invitation of and published by New York magazine, proposals from the exhibition at Max Protetch Gallery, as well as a selection from the more than 5,000 schemes submitted to the competition for the World Trade Center Memorial. This survey features in depth the official scheme for the site, designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with the collaboration of Daniel Libeskind of Studio Daniel Libeskind; Reflecting Absence, the winning scheme for the memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker; and, as well, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava, DMJM + Harris, and STV Group.

New Classicism provides an in-depth look at a form of design that appeared lost forever with the rise of modernism in architecture. But now, with an intense revival of interest in classical design, and with the demise in popularity of the subsequent postmodernism, new vigor has infused traditional forms and motifs. Focusing on thirty-four projects by the best classically oriented firms in the United States and Great Britain, New Classicism examines this burgeoning new vogue for the many varieties of traditional classical design, such as Georgian, Palladian, neoclassical, Greek Revival, Empire and Federal, and even classicized forays into the Gothic.

Following on the runaway success of This is New York, Universe is thrilled to reissue two more titles from M. Sasek's beloved children's travel series: This is London and This is Paris. Like This is New York and This is San Francisco, This is London and This is Paris are facsimile editions of Sasek's original titles. His brilliant, vibrant illustrations have been meticulously preserved and remain true to his vision. With the passing of time facts have been updated where applicable in the back of each book. Perfect souvenirs with timely and nostalgic appeal, the books have an elegant, classic look and delightful narrative that will charm both children and their parents, many of whom will remember them from their own childhood. This is London, first published in 1959, presents impressions of London with its beautiful buildings, historic monuments, bridges, parks, shops and Piccadilly Circus, black cabs, Horse Guards, and famed Underground. This is Paris, first published in 1959, brings Paris, one of the most exciting cities in the world, to life. There are famous buildings, beautiful gardens, cafes, and the Parisians-artists, concierges, flower girls, and even thousands of cats. Take a tour along the banks of the Seine, through the galleries of the Louvre, and to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

The Architecture of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company is a monograph on the highly successful urban design and architecture firm started by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk in 1980 and now known simply as DPZ. Credited with popularizing small towns and villages as welcome alternatives to the bleak monotony of the suburbs, DPZ champions vernacular architecture (traditional buildings with ties to local culture) in neighborhoods that share the same common features that made smalltown living so livable. This book illustrates representative buildings, mainly houses, that make up some of these communities, in such places as Seaside, Florida, Kentlands, Maryland, and Markham, Ontario. In addition, the book showcases individual buildings that demonstrate DPZ's reinvigoration of a simple vernacular architecture, including the Hibiscus House in Coconut Grove, Florida, and the Carambola Villas in St. Croix.

A passion for luxury and beauty propels the multifaceted work of acclaimed international architect and interior designer Robert Couturier. Robert Couturier's aesthetic is a dialogue between Old World elegance and contemporary design. His masterful approach effortlessly brings eras together, for example a Louis XVI commode with a 1960s lamp. Couturier's name has become synonymous with continental and international style, and he is known for composing adventurous rooms that have a witty flair. All his interiors extol the importance of how a home should stimulate the five senses, from the tactile feel of upholstery to the visual presentation of objects that leads a person through a space. The book opens with a tour of Couturier's country retreat in bucolic Kent, Connecticut. Composed of neoclassical-style pavilions, early American guesthouses, and beautiful gardens, the house features imaginative rooms that are filled with his collections of European art, furniture, and decorative objects. A selection of the designer's other projects — from smart contemporary apartments to romantic Mexican villas to a stately English manor — provides further inspiration.

«Dostoevskij era uno di quei rari geni che avanzano d'opera in opera, per una sorta di progressione continua, fin che la morte non li venga bruscamente a interrompere. Nessun ripiegamento in quella sua focosa vecchiaia, non più che in quella di Rembrandt o di Beethoven, al quale mi piace paragonarlo; un sicuro e violento approfondirsi del suo pensiero» (André Gide). Fëdor M. Dostoevskij (1821-1881), scrittore russo. Cominciò a pubblicare nel 1846, con Povera gente e Il sosia. Seguirono Umiliati e offesi (1861); Memorie dal sottosuolo (1864); Delitto e castigo e Il giocatore (1866); L'idiota (1868); I demoni (1871-72).»

«Questi racconti tesi, asciutti, drammatici, percorsi da una vena sottile di umorismo narrano, in prima persona, alcuni episodi vissuti dall'autore in un angolo sperduto della provincia russa a contatto con un'umanità primitiva e superstiziosa. Essi sono la trasposizione letteraria della durissima «prova iniziatica» subita dal giovane Bulgakov, appena uscito dalla facoltà di medicina e spedito a dirigere un ospedale rurale e ad affrontare, da solo, casi clinici spesso sconvolgenti. Costituiscono inoltre il punto d'incontro della duplice personalità scientifica e artistica di Michail Afanas'evic e testimoniano il suo passaggio dall'attività medica all'attività di scrittore.»

Painting in the Netherlands during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries offers a compelling visual record of the tastes and values of a prosperous society mindful of its obligation to personal and public standards. This richly illustrated volume examines twenty-six paintings by master artists from this Golden Age of Dutch art and features essays by leading scholars who explore the various interpretations of these works within the context of their culture. A Moral Compass, published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Grand Rapids Art Museum, includes individual descriptive entries on each work and artist by Henry Luttikhuizen, guest curator, an introduction by Peter Sutton and essays by Arthur Wheelock, Jr., Lawrence Goedde, and Mariet Westermann. These distinguished curators and art historians provide their insights on the artistic achievement of the Netherlands during an extraordinary period of maritime dominance, material affluence, and moral purpose.

One of the few truly visionary architects of large-scale commissions working today, Thom Mayne's influential firm Morphosis, founded in the early 1970s, has maintained an avant-garde presence among contemporary architecture firms, even as it has garnered high-profile, big-budget commissions from around the world. Since Rizzoli published Volume I of the Morphosis series in 1989, the Los Angeles-based firm has continued to push its intricate modernism into new territories. In the tradition of its four visually groundbreaking predecessors, this fifth volume packs 500 illustrations into a comprehensive tour of Morphosis's activity. New works covered in Volume V include Cal Trans Headquarters in Los Angeles (2004); the San Francisco Federal Office building (2006); the Wayne L. Morse United States Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon (2006); and the University of Cincinnati Student Recreation Center (2006). Projects in progress, such as the New Academic Building for the Cooper Union in New York (expected completion 2008) and the Phare Tower for La Defense, France (2012), will also be featured.